



^^'U-yU^ 



The President's Death. 



A DISCOURSE. 



B-2- C. J^. BA-R-TOL- 



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^i 



THli PRESIDENT'S DEATH 



5V ^Dtccourcc 



DELIVERED IN THE WEST CHURCH, 



On Sunday, the 25th of September. 



By C. a. BARTOL, 



BOSTON : 
A. W I 1.1,1 A MS & C ( 
I SS 1 . 



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82^ 






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PKESIDKNT GARPII'l.D AS THE VICTIM 
OF AMERICAN POLITICS. 



John xi, 50. — It is ExrEDiFNT for us that one man should die for the 

PEOPLE, AND that THE WHOLE NATION PERISH NOT. 

As this old Hebrew prophet and priest, with a 
devout instinct, rose so finely above the immediate 
agencies of an impending tragedy into the large, 
providential view, so let us ascend from the personali- 
ties of our crisis, from the cross of pain on which our 
civil head has expired, and the cup we have to drink, 
and dark coil of mortal instruments, to consummate a 
signal sacrifice. The pious disciple and preacher, 
whose religious faith was more to him than his lofty 
chair, has followed his Lord. Let us acknowledge, in 
the broil of human passions and the to the superficial 
eye chance medley of earthly events, a heavenly design. 
Boldly saith the prophet Amos, " Shall there be evil 
in the city, and the Lord hath not done it ? " " The 
wrath of man," declares the psalmist David, "shall 
praise him." Christ bore his agony for a reason of 
his Father. In our anguish, through confusion and 
clamor of human acts and voices, let us discover a 
divine aim, and listen to a word which no policy or 
plea of ours can drown or divert. 

Caiaphas foretold Christ should die for Jews and 



Gentiles. How by other death, as well as his, we are 
redeemed ! As by that of the great war President 
twenty years ago, so may it be by that of our Presi- 
dent in peace now. Garfield was like Lincoln in his 
humble origin, early struggles, extraordinary compass 
thrcugh all grades of the highest office ; in his pure, 
honest, simple, patriotic, and pious character, and in 
the assassination, too, that tracked the discharge of his 
duty, as he understood it in his place ; victims, both, 
and atoning sacrifices on their country's altar: for 
however awful the murderous guilt, the nation needed, 
and could not, in the supreme counsels, have done 
without the blood. How that of Lincoln cemented 
and fortified the land ! After it was shed, foreign in- 
tervention became at once how impossible ! One sign 
or motion of that arrogance would have stirred the 
American people to a sacred fury then, after the fune- 
ral of their chief, transcending even the white heat of 
the French Revolution. Lincoln's fall unhorsed Louis 
Napoleon from his transatlantic plans, and checked 
in Laird's ship-yard the building of privateers, and 
sounded the knell of doom on the rebel heart. No 
more surely did the salvation of the world succeed 
the crucifixion of Jesus, than did our political deliver- 
ance the expiring of our commander and head, shepherd 
of these then dis-United States: that marvel of coun- 
try-loving zeal and divine patience ; of a poet's imagina- 
tion and a hero's hand; robbing Moses of his catechism 
title of " the meekest of men," for he slew no Egyp- 
tian or American, only was himself slain. His is the 
only name, says the clerical Southern author of that 
interesting book, " Our Brother in Black," universally 
known among the negroes, the mass of whom have 



never heard of Sumner or Garrison. " The Lord 
made me, but Massa Linkum made me free," said the 
colored boy ; and " Massa Lincohi," said the colored 
man, " be everywhere like the Lord." He died for 
our reunion ; has not Garfield died for our reform ? 
The civil service of this country and its reform are 
second in importance to its union alone, — the nation 
might perish without it; and despite the unhappy 
quarrel which in the Republican ranks inaugurated 
the late President's administration and hindered his 
steps, notwithstanding his own frank and evident 
mistakes, it was in his own heart to do riirht. For 
any wrong move on the political chess-board, to check- 
mate dangerous insolence with official power, not he 
but his adviser may have been mainly responsible. It 
was scarce done by him, but by whoever inspired the 
act. " The face was the face of Jacob, but the hands 
were the hands of Esau." Indeed, a great English 
review, uttering its judgment from that impartial 
distance across the sea, represents Garfield before his 
death as a martyr to his resolute resistance of the 
doctrine of State rights, reappearing in the form of 
senatorial dictation of nominations put by the Consti- 
tution in the President's gift ; and I so believe in the 
sincerity and devotion to duty of the good dead magis- 
trate as not to doubt he would have been inclined to 
rectify all errors, others' or his own, and as a righteous 
ruler dispense fairly the enormous patronage which 
makes the White House stronger than any palace in 
the world, and, as we have learned so sadly, brings its 
occupant, like the Russian Czar, within the range of 
an American Nihilist's deadly ball. But it i)leases the 
Power, whose course to its ends is unbaftied by the 



wicked whimsies of men that cannot be marplots in its 
plan, that our unstained and noble representative in the 
highest chair should serve our at present most exigent 
cause not mainly by his life but by his death; which 
let us hope and pray may bring us out of our partisan 
ways to our patriotic senses, strike a truce of God to our 
selfish battles and low squabbles for the loaves and 
fishes, and lift us to a higher plane of equal justice to 
all sections and parties than we have h*ad under the 
persona/ govQvnment we reproach other nations with, 
and which the American, not by its fundamental law, 
but in its perverted partisan practice, has so largely 
become. 

No better omen could be of our regeneration than 
the universal appreciation, even in that beautiful 
extravagance so true to the human heart, of the man 
in whom we were politically incarnate, the hold-fast 
of our common love to the sufferer whose agony 
of eighty days is over, and whose behavior in the 
sick-room was so beautiful and sublime, while his pat- 
tern of personal sanctity and fidelity in his domes- 
tic and social relations should be sanctified to this 
people in all its borders as is that of Queen Vic- 
toria to our mother England's homes. Had he not 
been good even more than he was great, the soul of 
mankind in all regions, which is never quite misled, 
would not, through its delegates in state and church, 
have throbbed as it did with a three-months' sympathy 
in our trial, and with thi.>. last sudden participation in 
the earthquake shock of our grief. No inheritance 
of privilege, as in most sovereignties abroad, descends 
to the family of the deceased, whose own prerogative 
no king's or emperor's could exceed ; for he was the 



choice of free citizens, and cliosen to be no figure- 
head of the ship, but in a trust to summon his cabinet 
and appoint many thousand servants of the common- 
wealth, which has proved to be perilous as immense. 
A man who was fallible like us all, but who never had 
an ill intent, on whose honor is no stain, in whose pri- 
vate life no speck, in the sun of his integrity no spots, 
he will be buried to-morrow in a genuine dignity, un- 
affected sorrow, and perfect peace, bequeathing to his 
successor and to the present and coming generation 
what he meant when, in his last anguish, he cried, 
" The people, the people, my trust." If not unerring, 
yet upright ; brave in fight; faithful to our menaced 
finance ; reaching the top of honor unsought ; winning 
the wide esteem which makes any particular detraction 
unavailing and substantially false. Were there just 
criticisms, they would be withheld, or but hinted as 
shadows in the picture of the politician he had been, 
blending more grandly in the statesman he became or 
was to be. Did that eye, so great and fine, of the 
Most High perceive even he would be unequal to the 
herculean task to cleanse away the accumulating foul- 
ness of our coarsely managed affairs, that by adverse 
circumstance and fierce enmity he might be thwarted or 
overcome, and that, speaking like Abel with his blood, 
and acting with spiritual potency out of his grave, he 
could accomplish more than with all the energy of his 
hand on the helm.^ Then, " after life's fitful fever he 
sleeps well." If " the evil that men do lives after them," 
the "good is not interred with their bones," but often 
wastes into proj)ortions beyond its actual passing 
scope. Sure it is ordained for this man to be canon- 
ized, buried in odor of sanctity, shine as a star in our 



8 

political calendar, become like Lincoln, though no 
doubt of lesser magnitude, a splendid myth in this 
United States story, and work as a memory far more 
than the effects of his so clearly recorded deeds. 
Thus by the law of character, which transcends per- 
formance and even genius, it is plainly decreed. All 
the low details will be gathered up to adorn him in 
his pre-eminent post ; he will be enshrined and half 
idolized in that homage to men of holy and solid worth 
which is akin and a step to the worship of God. 

" The king is dead, long live the king "; the Presi- 
dent is dead, to the President welcome and all hail, 
with vast and fearful stint before him to be the peer 
of that predecessor whose traits will be historic in 
many tongues, and are celebrated already not alone 
in English, but German and French. P'rom the Vice- 
Presidency to the Presidency is a long, and how unex- 
pected, unprepared-for — although, we should never in 
our elections forget, possible — stride ! IMr. Arthur has 
no option: the duty devolves on him, as much as of 
a son to take his father's place, or a partner in busi- 
ness to settle the accounts of the firm. Let us be as 
generous to him succeeding to his late superior, who 
ranked him in position, and soars in our estimate as he 
departs. Let him not be prejudged. A behavior 
during the illness and at the demise of the Presi- 
dent as fit as could be conceived has endeared him 
already to his million-fold constituency, and is his best 
inauguration ; and it is not in human nature for him 
to be deaf to the di\ine voice in ihat appointment 
which exceeds and excludes all those of lower mon- 
archs or magistrates, or to disregard the emphasis 
which Providence lays on a conscientious career over 



all earthly fame, promotion, or success. He must be 
possessed in his elevation with a religious mind, as he 
receives the admonition that " the paths of glory 
lead but to the grave." Remains of the President, and 
how they are guarded and lie in state, and are trans- 
ported to the resting-place near his nativity chosen by 
himself? What remains of him and will remain, but 
his virtues, so real, open, and plain? In his position, 
what an ascent from meanness and poverty; what a 
descent to pain, prostration, and the tomb, and the dis- 
appearance of his kith and kin from the Capitol hill and 
house ! What a revolution of the wheel of fortune, or 
rather the allotments of the immutable will by which 
all things are moved; signifying to the new incumbent, 
in this event so startling to a nation and the human 
race, not only how sober and responsible the obliga- 
tion he assumes, but with what advantages of the 
divinely hushed disputes of sections and parties it 
comes for him to hand ! Was ever in our annals 
opportunity more largely or favorably marked ? What 
shall we say, — what does the situation suggest to Mr. 
Arthur, but to be as noble and knightly as his Eng- 
lish namesake of the Round Table in the chivalrous 
traditions of the mother-land ? Could so poor a word 
from so obscure a quarter reach him, I would say, but 
that he must say it to himself: " You cannot espouse 
a quarrel in your own or any party over that dead 
body, which would turn or tremble in its grave were a 
bone of contention perpetuated in the place where it 
so lately sat. You cannot take sides, — either side, — 
in a wrangle about claims to posts and to patronage. 
It is not, from this decree of God through his doom- 
ster of death, your legacy, nor you its residuary legatee. 



10 

Your forerunner could desire from himself no such 
bequest; and for you, expressly or by implication, to 
grasp or adopt any such inheritance amid the shadows 
of the church-yard and out of the sobs of a land in 
mourning, were an impious, indecent, shameful thing." 
But the imagination of any preference of party to 
country now is itself an offence ; and if the laying low 
of our honored head can be sanctified to a revival of 
the old patriotism and a reform of partisan practice, 
to a change of heart in our politics, to transform 
selfish into equitable distribution of official favor, 
Mr. Garfield will not have died in vain ; he will have 
died for benefit greater than he could compass even in 
his life. " Mr. Arthur, you can do as well as he. 
Nay, with the occasion in this tender and awful crisis 
presented, you can do better than he ; for even he, 
fallible and ovcrpressed, was far from perfect in what 
he did." 

But another figure on our canvas, that of the 
assassin, though we would fain hide it, cannot be kept 
out of view; for it is not the accident or unimportant 
accessory it is by the press or by private opinion 
sometimes represented to be. " This effect " of a 
slaughtered chief magistrate " defective comes," in 
Shakespeare's phrase, "by cause," reaching farther 
than the vile person to whom it is referred. In the 
great tale of human salvation, Judas the betrayer could 
not be left out. The war of emancipation must have 
the shape of Wilkes Booth, dogging the steps and 
piercing the temples of Lincoln, our great civil martyr 
and saint ; and the civil-ser\ice reform had no other 
way of completion, nay, of earnest initiation, but by 
the pistol of Guiteau. Call it superstition, take affront 



11 

as for an insult at the idea, these interventions of 
dreadful crime have their shocking part to play on 
the stage of action and progress for mankind ; and out 
of evil comes how much of our good ? In India 
hundreds of human lives are lost every year by the 
bites of poisonous serpents ; and the President was 
stung as by a snake in human form. What shall be 
done witli the viper, then ? Nothing, I answer, let us 
hope, just now, but to hold him safe. We are at a 
funeral, the obsequies of a great officer, whose figure 
should occupy our horizon and fill the scene. Think 
little or nothing of the assassin, but for the moment 
keep him out of sight and for some considerable time 
out of court. "Stand back and let the coffin pass ! " 
There should be what the artist calls distance and 
perspective in the landscape and portraiture in which 
we are for the hour, as a community, embraced and 
engaged. The cortege of mourners fills the land ; 
fifty millions of folk make it up, even the wretch, 
its author or preliminary, being one, although he 
might be torn in pieces were he anywhere in 
our wide borders seen on the route. But it were 
a disgrace to the whole population to have him 
dealt with by a mob ; and General Sherman is rio-ht 
to say he must be protected for the law to dispose of, 
even if it bring hundreds into the same deadly risk. 
His life has not a millionth part the sacredness of that 
which he took : yet the soldier Mason, trying to shoot 
him with the gun, not his own, he was but in trust 
with as a guard, committed an act of the same lawless 
color as Guiteau's, with which a court-martial should 
de'al : and the entire American people would lose caste 
to kill the one man, rearing a gallows on the President's 



12 

coffin, and keep unpunished the other. Let cool, delib- 
erate Justice hold her scale of even beam for both, not 
only as a wood and iron ornament on the cupola of 
the court-house, but in our living hands, so that pro- 
cedure, after mature reflection, may be judicious and 
wise. 

One good result will be recoil of the American mind 
from the doctrine of assassination. As a great ship 
rises from and against the billows she is buffeted by, 
so the good sense or sentiment of the popular heart, 
more surely than even our strong-headed calculations, 
scorns, resists, passes triumphant over the oratory of 
dastardly murder in secret, the rhetoric of dynamite 
and dagger; just as it despises Joab, thrust under the 
fifth rib with the "Art thou in health, my brother.?" 
and Judas Iscariot's kiss in the garden and " Hail 
Master," to introduce the midnight band from the 
chief priests and Pharisees, with lanterns and torches 
and weapons. 

The Franco-American Mcssager, a French paper 
in New York, praising Mr. Garfield's qualities, thinks 
assassination not so strange in despotic countries, but 
marvels that a popularly chosen and self-made man, as 
once and again among us, can be exposed to such a 
fate as the telegraph sent to every post-office station, and 
to the tolling bells of all the cities and towns, last Mon- 
day night. But no institutions of freedom, no democ- 
racy or republican art. more than autocratic or aris- 
tocratic sway, has invented an antidote to human 
passions in their revengeful rage; and one lesson for 
us of what has so sadly occurred is to moderate our 
boasting over our liberty, by so many falsely conceived 
as license, when, in its derivation, the word means 



"learning," — liber, a book, practice of knowledge, 
obeying law. The lesson is to abate our contempt of 
other regions that cannot any longer out-Herod our 
catastrophes, and not to fancy how good and excellent 
among the nations we are; but that we have for im- 
provement, especially in civil reform, as much room 
as in our statutes or our territory. Is not this the 
meaning of that shot again " heard round the world," 
in a different way from the muskets at Lexington ? 
What to do with the man that fired it to reverberate 
with such dismal sound ? Let us quietly wait for the 
law to decide, not applying to him the doctrine of assas- 
sination he has at least done us the favor — so much 
eood even out of his sin — to bring into disrepute, as 
it can be directed to a President as well as a Czar, and 
acted on not only in Russia, but the United States. 
Its preachers will be apt for a while to hold their peace 
on a theory proving in practice so bad to humiliate 
as well as wound, and to strike a republic as surely as 
a throne, conspirators not being likely to distinguish 
among rulers when rulers as such are hunted as game. 
As for Mr. Guiteau, many must have said before Sher- 
man wrote, " Hanging is too good." Horsewhipping 
some have proposed, but does not that imbrute the 
more? Removal somehow from the society, citizen- 
ship, and body politic, at the whole of which he has 
struck, should be for the present his doom. Let such 
as would hound him for his fault not image him the 
monster as a typical man : remember he is not consti- 
tuted like ordinary men ; not a human angel but 
human animal, there being among our species wild 
beasts, venomous insects, tigers with teeth, and cobras 
with fangs. But when any such quadruped or winged 



n 

thing takes the upright shape, does it not deserve com- 
passion more than our revenge ? Yet, with the spon- 
taneous litany of a nation unavailing against the 
wiser Will to save our chief, who thought of praying 
for Guitcau? A service or collect should be insti- 
tuted for him too in the moral pillory of our annals, 
where he must forever stand. Would we could re- 
cover from the " lost arts " that mark put upon Cain, 
so that no man finding should kill him, but his degra- 
dation be stamped with a deeper than the line of any 
strangling cord ! He was not insane, we cry. Was 
he of sound mind, in a conduct so preposterous 
and wild ? I think a mania had come into him from 
the ^xed idea on which he had brooded so long. But 
should his craze spread, we could scarce discriminate 
it in our tribunals from the worst guilt; the protection 
of the community being the foundation of all written 
and statutory law. Yet the soul, in its lowest life, 
should never be given up ; and even this man's wel- 
fare, salvation, should be sought in whatever penalty 
is meted out. 

As respects our anxious suspense on the medical 
treatment of the case, it is a mercy to be assured that 
the ball was fatal from the first ; that no attempt at its 
extraction would have been safe ; and that we may 
hope to be spared a strife of doctors over the relics to 
be laid away to-morrow for final rest. How much 
more than he told, he that is happily rid of his muti- 
lated frame must have endured! But that endurance, 
that struggle for life, that submission, in which, like 
his Master, he uttered no com])laint even against the 
foe that smote him, was his crown of glory, will be 
the peak of his fame, and has already had the compen- 



15 

sation of a fellow-feeling for his and our distress from 
the ends of the earth ; an interest and attention which 
the most successful administration of our affairs would 
never have drawn to his name had he lived. 

" One touch of nature makes the who'e world kin " ; 

and what benefit as well as delight when the cup of 
communion not only stands in solid silver on the 
board, or is drunk in the conclave of some little sect, 
but passes round among the nations through all lati- 
tudes and longitudes of the globe, and is taken, not 
only wherever a fort stands or ship rocks under the 
stars and stripes, but is shared by French president 
and English queen, European emperors, sultan, cardi- 
nal, pope ; while Catholics join in friendly procession 
with Protestants at home after that honored bier ; and 
in the united love of every kindred and tribe and 
tongue, like the red aurora that sometimes visits us 
in our northern sky, the millennium seems to be dawn- 
ing over the sepulchre of a man ! How fit the language 
of Caiaphas, predicting that Jesus should "die, not 
only for his own nation, but also gather together into 
one all those scattered abroad as children of God ! " 
There is a purpose no iniquity can balk in whatever 
transpires. The dead, more than the live magistrate 
will bless. The course of things will not be broken, 
but upraised. Let this be blood of atonement to 
compose quarrel, usher in an era of good feeling, and 
quench forever into cold ashes and lifeless embers the 
coals of l^urning political hate! Are we aware how 
deep our civil sickness is, how far — yes, with us, our 
very selves and our friends — party has taken the place 
of public spirit, how, like contending hosts in battle, 



1(3 

we are arrayed on opposing sides, how partisan, in- 
stead of patriotic, almost the best of us have become, 
and how sorelv we need such heroic treatment for our 
cure, as, at the hands of the great Physician, we in 
fact receive ? Let us have grace to implore the sanc- 
tification of the bitter remedy he sees it necessary to 
choose for our case from his store ! 

As I heard the chirp of bird and insect in the wood, 
and as, in the gloaming, the shadows of night softly 
once more fell on the general grief, I thought how 
heedless of our calamity Nature appears to be. It 
looks almost like a mock to our tears and convulsions 
to have her go on so tranquil and serene, not caring 
whether a monarch falls to the ground or a babe. 
Yet, instantly, on a second thought, how kind in her 
to have no perturbation, however we her children may 
be disturbed! Did she enter into our humor, and 
quake or weep with us, instead of soothing, healing 
our spirit and drying our cheeks, how much worse, 
beyond control our trouble would become! She is our 
mother the more, and competent to nurse, because she 
does not aggravate the emotion she yet sympathizes 
with, nor encourage in us any excess even of affliction or 
supplication. Things will goon without check or inter- 
ruption from the vanishing of any man. The sun will 
rise and set, and the stars with their mysterious hope, 
vast room, and infinite possibility, come out. Govern- 
ment will proceed without jar or pause. Business will 
keep up its unceasing sound in all the fields and facto- 
ries, markets and marts. Death is but a messenger ; all 
the angels are of life; and some strong one has borne 
our leader to a better place than that at best harassing 
and thorny post, with all its lustrous eminence, he has 



17 

left. Let his successor have all the confidence which 
his deportment and his speech, alike admirable in the 
emergency, claim. How often in a home, the surviv- 
ors are exalted by some spirit unseen that has put 
off its clothing and left its handful of clay! The 
White House, turned into a sick-room and death 
chamber, cannot be entered with a rude, irreverent 
step. There is admonition, warning, solemn counsel 
in the apartments so still. There are ghosts there to 
teach without voice. There is a whisper louder than 
any cannonade to arouse the occupant and pervade the 
land. The flag floats over the Capitol, not gay and 
flaunting now, but with a new color in its folds, as if 
it "had been stained, yet with cleansing and glorifying 
drops. May it signify more than even honor, loyalty, 
justice, impartiality, love, and peace. 

God speed the President that is ! To be a benefac- 
tor, never had President of the United States more 
magnificent chance. Never were the people. North 
and South, readier than now, in their elevated and 
softened mood, to rally to their supreme officer's sup- 
port, and greet in his policy every measure to carry a 
real boon. We prayed for his forerunner, how impor- 
tunately ! Let us send up a petition of wisdom from 
on high for him to guard and to guide, and one also 
to him, that he will seek and trust in our fathers' God, 
and be under Him a good Providence at his station 
for their sons' and daughters' weal. 

Then even what has been mad and absurd in all 
that has come and gone, will be constrained to further- 
ance of the right; and our seal fulfil its motto, that 
" He may be with us as with our sires." Yesterday 
morning yonder, after the thunder-storm, I plucked 



IS 

from the swamp roses which had softly bloomed 
during the night. In the night of our trouble, out of 
the tempest of our misfortune, will conie beauty and 
bloom. 

The feeling, with steady concentration, for intensity 
and extent without example since Lincoln's death, made 
deeper by the peculiar circumstances of Mr. Garfield's 
loner illness than even that rare sensation near two 
decades since, is not only a tribute to the Presidents 
private character, but a testimony of our loyalty to the 
government assailed in his person,' resentment of the 
violence aeainst law and order, and resolution to hold 
treasonable and intolerable any threat to that majestic 
authority which is for the common safety and defence; 
although signals of respect, so many and marked, 
imply an extraordinary body of worth in the deceased 
man. Let his memorial be the renewal of our vows 
to the Constitution that shall survive us all ; and let 
our sorrow stir our religious faith. " There is a 
Providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them 
how we will." If it took in, for the working out of 
its own designs, the Pharisaic fury in our Lord's cruci- 
fixion, it has no less its sure resultant despite, nay, in 
sacred use of, our two Presidential assassinations. We 
cannot spoil its calculations. Through all our trials 
and cross purposes it will run its straight line of mercy 
and truth. On what a larger than any mathemati- 
cal blackboard, each and all together, we do the sum 
of life! The issue will be holiness, deliverance, peace, 
and bliss. So let us trust and pray ; and consider well 
in our national house-keeping, in time to come, the 
Divine Economy. 



'^ 



LlBBAR^ 



OF CONGRESS 



00A3 



057 5 #] 



